Budapest in 100 words 2017

Budapest is an open book, you just have to look around and read through the lines. Grinding trams, young lovers in the Karolyi Garden, tourist flood at the Great Market Hall, pigeons in the underpasses, sunset on the Citadel and dawn awakenings on Király Street. Everyone has stories about the city that’s what we are interested in. This year we announced again the 100 words Budapest application. Members of the jury Nóra Winkler, Zsófi Kemény, Viktor Dániel Nagy and Balázs Szálinger selected from many stories the best 100 ones to be included in a small book. The 12 best stories were released on October 6, together with art works of contemporary illustrators. At the opening ceremony, the awards giving was framed by music performances, Csicsergok and MIG singers, iamyank and Krisztián Kiss and his friends selected a story that they translated to the language of music.

The competition has been organized for the fourth time, with a total of 1036 works sent online and by post, or placed in 100 words boxes in the Szabó Ervin Library. Our team, with these short, subjective stories about Budapest, wants to inspire more and more people to put their feelings and experiences on papers. The essence of the competition is that anyone can write their story about Budapest, but these stories cannot be longer than 100 words.

One of the founders of Mindspace met with the members of the Plagio team in Santiago de Chile during his trip back in 2014. The Chileans started an application to process urban stories 16 years ago. The idea is so successful that the Chilean call receives tens of thousands of applications each year. The initiative was launched in Budapest in 2014 for the first time in Europe.

Budapest in 100 words competition could not have taken place without the cooperation and support of the CAFe Budapest Contemporary Art Festival. We also thank the Association of Young Writers for their great help.

After the autumn defibrillation of Rákóczi Square we were already pondering about the future of the Market Hall’s neighborhood and on how to open up possibilities for the revived community. As usually we exploited the cold winter days to get and think together, share visions of the Rákóczy-Horánszky Axis and enlarge our networks during some Monday night Józsefváros discussions.